Thursday, June 30, 2005

Here are some images from Saturday’s tornado six miles away from my house. The Feds came to analyze the damage Sunday and came up with the total. The next day I read it in the local news paper. People and their cameras taken pictures.....wanting to prove there is a tornado. Maybe the weather station picks it up on their Doppler guys? Get shelter why don't yeah? If a tornado hit my house I would be angry at all that software gone to waste. Not only that, but my PCs, LCD TV, and radios would be dysfunctional.

The F2 tornado touched down on the 9th tee of the Hammond Golf Course which is the first place I see when I enter Hammond from Roberts. It took down 20 trees in the golf course. The tornado took a five-mile trip through town. A total of 24 buildings had some damage; only eight had major damage. There were no reports of any injuries. If there was a relief effort and I had money I would donate $20. Right now the damage is covered by people’s insurance companies and Wisconsin’s natural disaster funds.

Total Damage 3.6 millionTotal Deaths: 1 death Hammond, WI Population: approx 1400 people (not all in town though)

Somewhere in Hammond

Okay, it was more like 3 miles at one time. That water tower is Roberts.

Tuesday, I forgot to ask bob to come over, but was to busy completing Xenosaga Episode 2 (fun, but short game) otherwise he and I would’ve been going places like seeing Steven Stellberg’s movie “War of the Worlds” starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. Director Steve even uses the script of the radio show of the same name in the 50s making people think a UFO invasion was occurring with some obvious improvements to relate to the times.

Yesterday, I went to Game Stop to pick up Atelier Iris ~ Eternal Mana ~ on it’s launch day. I was going to get this game one month ago. I’ve scanned the shelves and some pondering about the best deals vs. best scores. I saw Brothers in Arms for $30, but I knew I wasn’t in war themed videogames lately so I hadn’t purchased it otherwise I would’ve. I’ve heard about Katamari Damacy thanks to X-Play’s video review (a G4-Tech-TV show which gave it 5 out of 5) combined with Gameranking.com’s score helped my final decision. After hearing about the cashiers at Toyriffic chatting about R-Type Final being a very cool 2D side scrolling space shooter I’ve finally purchased it for $14. R-Type has been around since Sega’s Master System days (1986 - 1989) when these games were at the height of its popularity. Not even Star Fox is doing well in 2005. Star Fox clearly borrowed heavily from R-Type. Star Fox Assault came out for the Gamecube three months ago, and looks better than your average rail shooter while offering less game play value partially due to close quarter’s combat system awfully designed. Thanks a lot Namco for poor production values! I also asked for used copies of Lunar 2 Eternal Blue Complete (wasn’t in), Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath, and possible RPGs which have been of interest.

On my way home, I was heading north towards Minnesota’s capital St. Paul before I had made a quick turn to get onto the 2nd ramp to go east towards my state. The problem was my truck was 2 lanes left of the right ramp so I did a quick maneuver to go the right direction.

My Uncle invited me to his cabin way up north for Independence Day and I won’t go this year because I’m stubborn, lazy, and will get a free game out of it. No fireworks = free game! THANK YOU! The fireworks shot up there are state-of-the-art and this year only adults will go. Last July 4th we were on the train tracks when the train was speeding towards us. Organizers below told everyone to get off the tracks whom hadn’t listen for whatever reason even after the train passed through. *Remembers it like yesterday.* There were 50 merit badges selectable and the only place you could earn either the swimming or life saving merit badge required for Eagle Scout. Tomahawk had a commercial kitchen with employees making the scouts’ meals three times a day, but my troop cooked ours cause of the metaphor food tasted grouse half the time. Our troop packed in food to avoid the dreaded camp food.

Boy Scouts is an US Congress commissioned organization hence Eagle Scouts are guaranteed to get into the military. It doesn’t matter any more ever since I quit. Some Americans think it as a junior army and religious organization because you’re in uniform, but the organization is multi-lingual. Tomahawk has a Christian Chapel and an East Orthodox Chapel. I’ve been there from 1995 – 2001 starting at 11 yrs old.

Last night the power went out from a severe thunderstorm with possible tornado warning. The woods shield me from the worst of the storm. The outage occurred 15 minutes after I unplugged my LCD TV and PC power strips. Meanwhile, I’ve gotten bored from not being able to watch TV or surfing the Internet so I just crashed. Couldn’t sleep well…..tossed and turned all night. It wasn’t the lightning that bothered me. I tried to listen to the clock tick tock and sleep to that. The electricity went back on about 3 AM so I woke up….drank two glasses of milk, shut off the lights that were on before the storm and I woke up at 10:30 today.

I’ve had found the largest 3rd party developer rankings which is difficult to obtain. Sega would have been in 2nd place under Nintendo during the 16-bit era. EA is bigger than Nintendo.

Friday, June 24, 2005

The following paragraph is straight off Blu-ray.com. Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has announced three months ago that their single layer BD is ready for manufacturing. It works exactly the same as a DVD, but as high tech as HD-DVD. HD-DVD decks will appear before Xbox 360’s launch date. BDA is ready to use the MPEG4 AVD codec as their primary video codec. MPEG 4 (also H264 Part 10 is commissioned by ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector) is compatible with either PCM or MPEG 4 AAC codec. DivX & Xvid add mp3 and OGG Vorbis support. It would be wise to add Xvid to the deck player’s firmware in case I want DivX on my LCDTV. It’s excellent at halving file size of MPEG2 (H263v2).

On Monday, Silhouette Mirage became my latest addition with me thinking, “Oh man, Treasure usually makes great action games.” The other game I’ve purchased new was Fire Emblem - The Sacred Stone. The franchise has never been 3D until Intelligent Systems developed Fire Emblem for Gamecube which also interests me after couple internet reviews gave the Fire Emblem - The Sacred Stones an 8.5. The noise it makes is amongst GBA’s finest. Fire Emblem SNES carts are very hard to get so I had skipped it entirely. I’ll try out Top Spin after I complete Xenosaga Episode 2 since that’s what I’ve bought it for.

I’ve had found a stream-saving plug-in for Winamp 5 accomplishing what Quintessential Media Player is good at. Now, all I need to do is wait for the broadband technicians to come than I’ll play online at 1 Mbit or 1.5 Mbits given there isn’t a thunderstorm outside.

Yesterday, I am almost finished the 2nd DVD of Xenosaga Episode 2 - Beyond Good and Evil. I haven’t met one gnosis yet which are man eating aliens in the first Xenosaga. I made it to the beginning of DVD #2, but my party needs to escape in the DAMMERUNG to the lost planet Old Militia with Zohar on it. Game play glitches are scarce enough to be fun. The city music in the first disc was something I liked. It took me 4 hours to complete the first DVD. Not off this Federation planet yet and 2 hours passed by. I checked the first DVD which was 4.2 GB than the second DVD which was 4.3 GB. Xenosaga Episode 2 has 100 minutes long of spoken ‘in game’ dialog with English subtitles. PCM does the job well enough for Namco to use it. My idea was Namco’s choice of what audio code to use was irrelevant since Xenosaga Episode 2 needs 2 SL-DVDs for storage. Games formatted on DVD-9 would add more stress on the laser degrading it faster so Sony decided to not use dual layer. We’ve all learned DVD Video has added stress on the laser shorting the lifespan of PS2.

I’ve had driven to Toyriffic in Hudson, WI to look at games, but not before ‘filling my tank’ in River Falls, WI. At Toyriffic, I almost bought some worthless game like Gundam vs. Zeta. Top Spin (tennis) received excellent internet scores so I chose that. Marcus (who works there often) wasn’t available so I gave another guy my largest MP3 DVD out of 3 copies. The conversation with him was about Blu-ray, PS3, Xbox 360, and how Revolution allows ROMs to be downloaded onto its hard drive. We didn’t talk about Blu-ray specs. Never-the-less, he spoke of next generation videogames ending up costing $60 - $70! If I can’t avoid the inevitable than I’ll just live with it.

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Friday, I’ve completed Stella Deus Gates of Eternity. The strangest aspect of the game was the Phantasy Star style 2D cut-scenes. I’ve had played the entire game in 6 hours Thursday and Friday. First, the game has been taken over by an overlord than I must save the world (not Earth) from a growing desert. The Sharman protect the living mana things called “spirits”, but then the main character decides he won’t kill spirits any longer & as a result he tries to open the Gate of Eternity which will stop the ever-growing desert from destroying the planet. Ironically, there is an alchemist in my party, but wasn’t necessary to deploy her in every battle. Alchemists are bad news. Afterwards, my party of 8 finds a fake Gates of Eternity somewhere else on the continent. Then gaining 5 spirit bosses (after I hit each one twice), I’ve defeat the guardians who wanted the world to end guarding the Gates of Eternity. It’s impossible for me to loose a mission so my strategy is simple. Send 2 characters left side, 2 characters forward in the middle, with the remaining two characters right side. Five of the six characters use melee attacks. The Sharman was my only ranged character. Each “mission” lasts 2 minutes or less. Just play the game and you’ll see.

Today, Randy wanted me to help relocate his TV and DVD collection at his new home in Menomonee, WI. Randy and I haven’t seen each other for 3 weeks, but he knew I’ve had a sport utility vehicle which he said would be perfect for his TV. I’ve had to leave home without my FM transmitter which broadcasts MP3 signals to FM channels. We’ve had visitors who weren’t Randy’s family so there was no music running. His boss from St. Croix Central (high school) was there to help his son also Randy’s roommate. However, I was attending private schools those years so he was a complete stranger. In my opinion, Randy has a ditsy girlfriend. Bob’s sister Jessie might have wanted to come along. She was in the perimeter just before we left Hammond. O-well. We’ve talked about the weather; what I was doing (which is explained here) alone, and why his upstairs floor was poop color (off topic discussion). Bob didn’t show up probably because he was working. His schedule was 2pm – 11pm Wednesday thru Monday. For Bob, Tuesdays are his days off so that’ll be my chance to ask him. I was worried of getting lost in Menomonee, but I’ve had found my way to the freeway thanks to signs. On the way home, I was going 70 MPH and a lot of other drivers were going 80 MPH. There were no cops around so I did the same thing.

I went over to Stuff5’s software blog and found me a free global internet voice-over-ip client which I like to use in the future called Skype. My username is renegadeviking, and I’m online now. I own a microphone and that’s all I need for voice chat. Check it out. I warn you that dial up audio quality of voice-over-ip sucks.

In recent news, IBM was successful at emulating the 733 MHz Pentium 3 in Xbox. The major difficulty was legal battles over NVIDIA’s chip so MS is going to license NVIDIA technology in Xbox 360 either by allowing ATI to use patented NVIDIA microchip in the Xbox 360 graphic processing unit in a GPU alliance or creating the extremely expensive technology themselves. Microsoft settled the agreement by giving NVIDIA annual payments every year. NVIDIA is already licensed to manufacture the Playstation 3’s graphics chip. I suspect that Playstation 3 will emulate PS2 when it comes out next summer in Japan & North America in September.

I’ve learned that Nintendo might use a touch pad on Revolution’s controller. One Photoshop art of the controller hit the web, but it’s fake. The controller will be missing a D-pad so Gamecube games will still use Gamecube controller that’ll plug into the right side of Revolution.

I am hoping I’ll get broadband next month. Streaming audio stations at 192 kbps while playing online with no latency.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

These past days I’ve tried my damniest to stay focused in Guild Wars, but it ended up not working very well. No doubt the game is fun of which there’s plenty to do, but there’s very nice weather outside. Wisconsin only gets sun and 60° three months out of every year. Otherwise, Wisconsin is from 60° to below freezing the rest of the year. Bob and I might meet up next Tuesday. I can’t see Randy since he is helping his friends and himself move to a new house and therefore I’m bored beyond imagination. Meanwhile, I could just find a job, but that means I’ll have to put my back into it. There is something about my TV that interests me. I’m another couch potato and not afraid to admit it. SO THERE!

Current Winamp Skin

I’ve had watched Aviator with Leonardo DiCapito who plays this silly person first working for the Hell’s Angels than forms his own aviation company called TWA. TWA was a direct competitor to Pam Am a much bigger aviation company. The guy cracks when his plane he’s piloting blows up and the disaster cost TWA millions. He had 3rd degree burns through-out most of his body, but is able to help design the “TWA Tornado” 1950s era jumbo propeller passenger aircraft with his own money. Anyhow, the interesting part is when he talks to himself naked over a projector screen of old airplanes’ dog fighting which is disturbing. In my personal opinion, older movies are better at recreating the era(s) of the 1920s and 1950s than Hollywood today!

Friday has gone easy. I hadn’t realized I had doubles in my Trance folder so I deleted 500 MB of extras. Bob encoded full Prodigy and Underworld albums on his computer I now own. I like Underworld - Cowgirl the best. I also downloaded more off Kazaa.

Cyberscore now blocks me from posting, because I’ve had talked poorly about other users or have too silly things to be said about the game industry since we don’t see eye to eye after all. The first time I had deleted my account a couple Cyberscore members came over to my forum (Catharton Electronica), and I’ve lost credibility due to the banding. Today, I’ve post threads unless the server is down which happens frequently.

Yesterday was 80 degrees and muggy just like today. I’ve done nothing outdoors. However, a F2 tornado which hit twice in Hammond (6 miles away) destroyed a couple $100,000 worth of property composed of unfinished houses & trees. The tornado was on the evening news showing a couple sky cam shots with an amateur home video included afterwards. There hasn’t been a tornado within a 30 mile radius of my house for over a decade. There hasn’t been a death poll on the disaster yet.

I haven’t been out of my house since Tuesday so I’ve went forth (2:30 PM CST today) and spent $30 on two videogames I wasn’t sure I wanted which was very intelligent of me (sense the sarcasm here?). Contra - Shattered Soldier is the hardest PS2 game up to 2005. Contra games were always hardest. Note: After the 4th level game play starts getting impossible. I also own the best Contra in existence, Contra – The Alien Wars for Super Nintendo. The other purchase was an average choice, Sphinx - The Mummy’s Curse which isn’t at all exceptional in graphics, control, sound, character design, etc. Meanwhile, I’ve had burnt two DVDs with game ROMs & dance collection to give to two lucky people I don’t know, but must’ve forgot the dvds at home. You’ll see the v1.33 of my videogame list today. I’ll tell you how it went once I cheat in Contra. I hate to loose in videogames, but also accept it. Contra - Shattered Soldier is different, because it doesn’t play fair at all. I’ll be invincible so I can see the ending.

By the way, Eternal Daughters is an interesting freeware game downloadable at Acid Play. There is also another one, wandering-knights of the same caliber. Thirdly, if you like collecting freeware software check out Ahriman’s Prophecy. All of these games are freeware RPGs. Knowing some of people here are big fans of lists here are my country and trance collections I listen via computer or portable MP3 player. I’ve owned the mp3 player for over 2 years, and there isn’t any usage for it when I’m home.